


Just Say So

by StellarRequiem



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Channeling the spirit and style of the show as best I can I do hereby give you a, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Fic, First Kiss, It's set...whenever, THE ANCIENTS' PERFECT SHIP, kiss, lol safe and warm, shallura - Freeform, warm and fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 18:11:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9560906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellarRequiem/pseuds/StellarRequiem
Summary: What was supposed to be a stern conversation with Shiro about his insistence on putting himself at risk to protect Allura turns into an unanticipated confession. Shiro being Shiro, he takes it like a champ.Allura being Allura, she jumps right into a kiss.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [homesickblues](https://archiveofourown.org/users/homesickblues/gifts).



> This fic takes place at an unspecified time in canon. Events from season 1 are referenced but it could take place sometime after certain hiccups from the season 2 finale are resolved just as easily. The context on this one is up to you!

“Shiro, I am not finished with you. Please, stay where you are.”

Allura stands strong, her hands crossed in front of her at the wrist and her head held high. Surely, the fact that her fists are clenched doesn’t matter. It's at least better than allowing her hands to shake. Such a display of anger or, or fear, or—

Well, it would be inappropriate and unbecoming.

At Allura’s command, Shiro hangs back from the others with a furrow in his brow that she might have mistaken for unhappiness rather than concern, were his eyes not so soft. Of all the earthlings, Shiro has the wisest, gentlest eyes. Perhaps that’s due to their shape. Or perhaps, more likely, it's simply because of who Shiro is: gentle but powerful, understanding and patient and keen.

The other paladins behind him throw sidelong glances at her, at Shiro, at one another, but their leader is steady as ever in the moments that follow her command. He waits perhaps more patiently than Allura does as they file out of the hanger, leaving Shiro alone with her at the black lion’s feet.

Allura steels herself as best she can. Fear is nothing to be ashamed of, of course, but in situations like this it is vital to sound stern and not panicked. Or shaken. Or worried. Let alone utterly, utterly _frightened_ for things far outside of herself.

“Princess?”

 _Allura. You really can call me Allura._ She's never told him so, but she nevertheless finds it stings a little every time the unsaid message goes unheard.

“We need to talk. Your actions today were far too reckless, Shiro. You are a paladin of Voltron, and you put all of that on the line when you—”

“And you,” he interrupts her with delicacy, just sternly enough to give her pause but far too kind to bring offense, “are our only means of escape when things get too hot, but that’s never stopped you from putting your life on the line for us. Or me.”

“If you are referring to my capture at the transit station, you have already rescued me once at great risk to yourself and to Voltron. You owe me nothing.”

Spiro's knitted brows unlace themselves to fly up his forehead.

“Owe you? Princess,” _Allura. Call me Allura,_ “I didn’t do it because of some kind of debt. I did it because I –all of us—care about you and I would never forgive myself if I allowed you to get hurt when I could have stopped it.”

“I—”

Fumbling is so unbecoming and I like her, it usually only happens when she's angry, which she isn’t, as much as she may sound it, yet Allura can't seem to keep her tongue from forming knots, just now, to her enormous chagrin. It takes her a tick or two to articulate herself in a manner she can be content with.

“I realize that I, too, am an asset to our mission but I will not allow you to put my wellbeing above your own,” she finally declares.

“With all due respect, if _you_ live to punish me for doing so, _I_ can live with the consequences.”

His gray eyes aren't too light for the weight of the conversation—indeed, the look in them is so earnest as to leave her flustered—but the softest shadow of a smile quirks the corner of his mouth as he speaks. It’s infuriating. Almost. Well, sort of. Well—

“I am being serious!”

Shiro’s best attempt to tame the grin only contorts it into something so endearing she could just, just— _slap him._ She would be _truly_ tempted, if his species weren’t so terribly fragile _._

“I know,” he says, smile cracking across every word. “So am I.”

“Then why are you grinning?” she demands.

“Because—” he begins . . . and stops himself one warm word into the phrase, momentarily fumbling. Allura’s chest tightens. _Why? What did you just think, paladin?_

“I . . . Well, in a way, It's kind of funny,” he says instead, as awkward as he can ever be.

“ ** _Funny?”_**

Shiro scrambles to recover himself.

“I mean, that we're arguing—”

“We are not _arguing,_ I am giving you an order not to put your safety at risk for mine and _you_ are disobeying it.”

“— _Arguing_ about how we're allowed to act on caring for each other.  You don't see any irony in that, at least?”

_He has a point._

_It is a tiny bit silly, I suppose . . ._

Allura opens her mouth to chase her wagging finger into a tirade, but the words won't come and her hand falls slack to her side in a moment.

“Well. . . Perhaps it is a little funny. In . . . a way. But I mean every word I've said, Shiro. You mustn’t continue putting yourself or this lion,” she waves at the patient beast above them, “at risk for my sake.”

Shiro crosses his arms across his chest, his smile dripping away. She's terribly sorry to see it go. It's not a common thing to see him smile: Not like _that_ , anyway. Not in that way that makes her cheeks too warm and the tingle of a change in skin color pricks at them reflexively, as if her subconscious were trying to mask the heat for her somehow.

“So did I,” he tells her. “The only way you will ever get me to agree to leave you behind is if you promise that, the next time I'm in trouble, you will do the same for me. The lion is resilient, it’ll be fine. And Keith can lead the paladins. So, _you_ promise not to risk them or yourself for me, and I promise I'll do the same for you.”

Allura feels herself blanch without any effort to mask it, subconscious or otherwise.

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” his tone isn't dark, but it is tired and a touch frustrated, not only with her, but with . . . some _other_ she can see in his dark eyes. “That isn't fair, and you know it.”

Indignant, she plants her hands upon her hips.

“Because I said—“ she begins, to her own horror.

 _Because you said so? Are you a child regeant again?_ The same question seems to be playing across Shiro’s expression, and she stutters, trying to talk away the foolish words:

“I mean, because you shouldn’t question my . . .” _‘Because I ordered you’ is just the grown-up version of ‘because I said so!’_ “Because . . .”

_Because?_

The answer is out of her mouth in a flurry of feeling and words before she can stop her own damnable honesty, the words practically a shout.

“Because it isn't fair to ask me give up on someone I care about as much as I do you!”

As the words rescind from the air, far too loud in the silent room, Allura is certain she can feel her own blood rushing to her face, and then out again as she watches his response.

A little stutter moves through Shiro. His arms clench around his chest before slowly unlocking from one another, moving halfway back to his sides as if unsure where to go.

_Oh, you silly, love-struck girl, Allura What have you just done?_

Allura is a woman grown. She's 10,000 years Shiro’s senior, too, whether she’d been a year younger than him when she went into hibernation or not. She is a _ruling princess._ But, in this moment, waiting for his reaction, for him to say _anything_ at all to her outburst, she feels so very, very much like a hapless child in much the way she sometimes does when she _remembers_ it all: The last days of the war, her father’s guidance so suddenly gone, how much she'd had to seek it before she's had to let him go . . . how very _alone_ they all are. Alone and small and helpless and silly. That's exactly how she feels now, only, it's far more difficult than usual to hide. Her cheeks feel as if someone has lit a fire across the bridge of her nose and the flames are racing outward across her face.

“I'm not sure,” Shiro finally says, painfully cautious with his tone, a wary glint in his steely eyes, “I follow. When you say, you _care_ —“

If her mice were here, she imagines they’d be turning little cheerleading cartwheels for her as she prepares for the words she knows must come next. They’re nosy, that way. And they’d be right. _Oh, you may as well get it all out into the open now._

“I mean that I have been falling in love with you, Shirogane Takashi.”

She yelps the words with a defiant stare, with her fists closed at het sides and her shoulders rigid, with her head held high even as her cheeks burn and her eyes prick, because there is nothing else to be done about it but tell the truth.

. . . Though that fact does not change the intensity of her _instant,_ mortified regret at having even opened her ridiculous mouth.

Shiro's mouth falls open just far enough that she imagines he might have meant to speak before snapping it shut again. His eyes as wide as twin moons, he swallows hard.

_I would very much like to go back into hibernation, now._

He studies her for two wordless ticks in utter stillness, arms still halfway to his sides, eyes still far, far too wide before he finally moves. He blinks thrice, rather quickly. And his mouth and eyes soften so enormously it’s disconcerting.

“Oh,” he breathes. “Well.” _Oh noo—_ “I wish you'd told me that sooner, Allura.”

Her name cracks like an electrical storm through her chest.

“Why?”

“Because I feel the same way.”

Allura’s mind screeches to a halt.

“ _You_ —”

She can’t say any more. Her mind can’t form anything coherent anyway, and even if it could, on that one word her breath rushes out of her, buying Shiro another half a sentence she barely hears.

“I . . .” he’s looking so very slightly awkward and uncomfortable, but more dumbstruck that anything. _How is he so calm about this?_

“I suppose that could have clarified a lot of this conversat—”

_Oh, because he's Shiro._

She throws herself at him before he can finish the word.

Many species kiss, and she knows from the other paladins and her mice’s whispers about them that humans are one of them, so she knows that he must understand what she's trying to do even if she can't be sure she understands herself. Her memories of this action are few, old, and hazy. She recalls moisture and warmth and a method of fitting lips together in such a way that they can move and pull and press and pinch, though the moment hers meet his, that much action feels far beyond her. Fitting her mouth against his requires concentration enough when the flash of shared energy ignites in her chest the way it does. His little stumble into her open arms suggests surprise at the sudden kiss, but she can _feel_ the rush it sends through him, the way his heart must be pounding and the free fall sensation in his chest that matches her own.

And, beneath all of that, there is, too, an earnest gentleness so kind it aches to receive, such a welcome opening if his heart to her that he manifests outwardly by his tenderly placing his hands around her waist.

But the kiss is brief and hard and without motion, and so terribly eager, that she can't help but chastise herself back into some semblance of order. Allura collects herself by pulling away from his lips, hesitating on the verge of dragging her arms from around his shoulders as well.

She looks up at him from beneath the lowered lashes of nervous giddiness and finds that Shiro looks all but dazed, and it’s terribly, terribly difficult not to giggle like a girl at his wondrous expression.

“Was that all right?” she asks instead. Fighting back both the bubble of laughter and the tightening of uncertainty in her throat, her voice sounds a little breathless. _There is probably no helping that._

Shiro blinks once, rapidly, and a smile so utterly . . . _pure_ that her heart feels as if it's swelling as she looks at it breaks across his face. An utterly joyous grin.

“That was _more_ than all right,” he says, and, pulling her gently closer by her waist, he presses his smile to her mouth once more.

A slow kiss, and tender, this time she remembers how to move her lips against the heat of his in a delicate dance she'd be content to waltz for another ten thousand years.

Perhaps she would, if it weren't for the chorus of whooping and hollering and commentary of four paladins and one old friend so determined to interrupt.

“Seriously, guys?” Shiro demands while Allura does her best to look intimidatingly indignant without removing her arms from around his broad shoulders. But the smile hasn’t quite left his mouth. And he has not let her go.

Nor, she understands—and the _knowing_ makes it so tremendously difficult not to kiss him again this instant—will he ever do so ever again. 


End file.
